Ack! That doesn't sound like much fun. Diablo may not have to worry about me. I don't think I will last much longer. Too bad, it could have been a great game with a few changes. Right now it is just a chore. I am at the entrance to the Chaos Sanctuary.

I'm not going to try any more serious assaults until the weekend. It takes too long since you must do the lot in one game with no exits. I'll build my sadly depleted cash reserves up by doing smaller runs on the upper levels of Act IV.

and I'll mostly be playing Vampire: Bloodlines or Morrowind. I need a change.

Then again, someday I will take out Diablo, and that is going to be such a buzz.

I find it helpful when dealing with the boss to have ready portal skill. Open portal the moment you enter the room. Now switch to other combat skills and hope you can get to the portal when you need to.

I got Diablo in the first game and didn't think it was that hard, but this Diablo is totally different. At least you could have a save to start from in the first game. I worked for hours to get from the last waypoint to the next bunch of monsters and in a misstep died in a couple seconds. I didn't even get to see Diablo. I don't know if I have the heart to try again. If I do, it will have to be an early start, because I can't shut the game down until Diablo is dead. I've played a lot of hard games and was always able to finish them, but I have my doubts about finishing this one.

Originally posted by VHLMagic: Why is it always the case in these games where the big (really big) bad guy has a ton of help and there you are (whimps) trying to get him with maybe 1 or 2 whimpy helpers.

You would think that by the time you got to him that you would be able to handle him and his minions....but nooooooo....you have to struggle just to get rid of him. Jeez.

Woo Hoo, I beat him too. He killed me the first time but I got my reserve equipment and went after him again without exiting the game. I used a hit and run attack. It took a long time and almost all my health potions--I was getting worried, but he is a goner.

It was the second time I did the sanctuary and the first time I met up with Diablo.

I completed the first quest. I wish I had more gold. I haven't been finding anything that is worth much and only have 70,000. It didn't help when I bought a gold belt worth 22,000 that claimed to give enhanced defense of 36% but I only got the 6 extra points that the basic defense of the belt gave. I evidently don't understand this. Why was it so expensive? I also had to replace some of my equipment I lost to Diablo and didn't recover.

Be careful doing the second quest. There are three mini-boss monsters that you have to take care of. They do drop some nice stuff. Which means that you can kill them, save and exit, jump back in and kill them again.

I started Act 5 with a similar amount of gold. But I hadn't lost equipment - I kept exiting and reloading which meant I had to clear out the area around Diablo again - and again - and again.

I have a hoard of goodies to place in sockets, I just wish I had more equipment that had sockets. I upgraded a claw weapon to something wicked with the bonus slots from the smith.

No way I was going to exit the game before I got Diablo. My reserve equipment was good enough to finish him off and then I grabbed nearly all my good stuff off my body before the game ended. I had done the same thing earlier in the Sanctuary and it worked out.

If you exit the game after killing the minibosses, don't you have to kill everything again--or are you near a waypoint?

Do you have charms or amulets that give you better loot? Those charms are ridiculously large for any value they give.